Legends of Tomorrow season 7

Have finished watching the last season of Legends of Tomorrow.

On the one hand I definitely cared about the characters and what they were going through
but on the other I'm not sure I liked it.

Especially since I did like season one and the more I think about it the more season 7 is what happens if season one never made a difference. I mean ( Read more... )

Legends shenanigans are fun to roll with, but the series suffered because the ethics depends on the physics, and they never defined the physics.

Season 7 addresses the origins of time travel, and reckons that any time traveller interfering with the fixed points that are the cause of the origin of time travel would simply fade away. Cease to exist. So, they conclude, nobody could do it, and guarding it is useless.

But, there's more than one sort of time travel. Even only counting what was invented on Earth.

If you count all the tech as fundamentally one method, ignoring the obvious differences between the Waverider and the Time Couriers as different branches of one tech, that still leaves Speedsters and Magic users. Whatever the time stone was, that's not something that was invented in WWI. Speedsters get born and then struck by lightning, they don't exactly have intellectual property to set up. ... the version where a particle accelerator explosion is necessary to kick it off does have a lot more tech, but not specifically time travel tech as far as we know.

So the tech users cannot interfere with the origins of their own tech without interfering with their ability to interfere. That's paradoxical.

But speedsters can do as they please, and the time stone and the paradox demon, and aliens with different history of tech behind them, and that is a non trivial amount of possibilities.

And all of them could gain assorted powers out of doing so, a political edge or a greater degree of control for their own people.

Same way the only way it makes sense to get Time Masters is if they bring the development of time travel tech in house so only Time Masters have time travel. Kind of like how they recruited Stein, I've been saying from the start, the only way to have the control is to keep all the ideas to yourself. They call the rest time pirates, Mike calls them Time Bandits, it's implying a hierarchy of legitimate vs illegitimate time travel. And the only way to enforce that is to be the only one with the tech.

When they're not, you get edit wars.

Fixers have superior time tech.

But Eobard didnt need it in order to do exactly what he was doing. If he had his speed he could have moved between frames too. So the writers juwt threw in fixer tech and pulled out speedster complications.

You could try controlling speedsters by getting them all at birth but everything with Eobard suggests you'd get older versions of them turning up fresh out of the speed force and deeply annoyed. So they're going to stay free even if their timelines get erased.

Time Wraiths get invoked to tidy that up.

Still leaves demons, and whatever Dark's stone was, but that got some applied retcon in the Flash.

Shouldnt be practically possible to control time travel with the variety of powers and methods they've shown. But they're doing it anyway, by the end.



They also never define 'the' timeline. The Flash keeps making new ones and Legends keeps saying 'the'. Can't argue the ethics until you've got the facts.

And what does it do to change the timeline? If it destroys a universe, problem. If it makes everyone take a do over until every editor thinks things are perfect, different problem. If it creates a new branch of the multiverse, very different problem if problem at all. And different stories imply different things in the same 'verse, so, difficult to argument.



See I feel like season 7 set up worlds of new problem for next season. Except there is no new season. So instead it's done a full circle futility problem.


... I never like how the story treats Eobard Thawne and I know that's... quirky.


I actually can make Story out of the idea that Crisis created multiple copies of Thawne, from the memories of different people, and they end up with different values. So there's this 'lawful' one that is Sarah's idea of an improvement and the one in the Flash that is Barry's nightmare and the one in the Flash that is the blank slate the actual history or lack thereof makes of him.


But it's just clumsy writing that doesnt expect us to care. So.



I have the next season of the Flash because I bought the full series box set of blu ray when it came out, but I'm not actually looking forwards to it.

I need to find stories where there's a vague possibility they'll agree with me what a happy ending looks like.



Or make them.

But tell us why

I have been thinking about time travel
and whatever reasons characters have to 'protect' the timeline

and I think that when writers agree completely with one side of an argument
the story is worse.

Like they forget they have to explain or even make an argument, it's so water is wet to them,
so you end up with arbitrary rules based in a culturally religiously and every other ly specific mindset
that just doesnt see they've given all the good lines to the other guy.

If they have to figure something out they'll remember to explain it to the audience.

Lit class said story is thesis antithesis synthesis
like you have two positions arguing and coming to a new truth
so the truth that is obvious to the author needs to be the synthesis, not either of the starting points.

But in a multi season show they'll arrive there at the first point they believe they'll get cancelled.

Then any new characters will be making new arguments but the desired truth doesnt change.

No synthesis.



That's tricky.



But it's like saying you get the characters to be who you want them to be at the first cancel point so no character development after first season. You just have to have an assortment of ways to have your protagonists wander off model for the course of a season. Big ticket ones like fear and the seven deadlies are a good start. Then they gradually conquer those tendencies in themselves whilst also circling back to the writer's idea of true. They have to present an argument to themselves, to get back on course.

Man vs man, man vs self, thesis antithesis synthesis edition.




This annoyance brought to you by
the timeline is sacred
and other defences of the status quo that never articulate why it is the only thing worth defending.

The bad guys so often have a point because the bad guys are the ones trying to change things
since the good guys circle back to their most iconic state so often.

... mind you that includes Gotham being Gotham, so iconic and desireable arent the same
but lets face it, in any other city Bruce Wayne would have fixed it by now, inventing enough problems a billionaire can't fix them without punching is a whole argument about the nature of people in itself...


So writers need to include
why are we defending this exact this
and
why aren't our tools working yet
and
how are these tools going to work
and
why is this guy opposing it

and then
move everyone along a bit
to a better everything.

... usually they remember to level up the tool kit, I guess...